Cocaine is as popular as ever – but it’s not exactly the most ethical thing you can buy on a night out.

It’s no secret that behind our cheeky line there is almost definitely murder, torture, deforestation, poverty and fear. In fact, these horrific realities have even been glamourised in films and TV shows such as Narcos.

Yet despite this, the number of British users has trebled in the last two decades.

In fact, London is so big on coke we have the highest concentration of the stuff in our water out of all of Europe’s cities.

One coke dealer in LA, called ‘Ra’, told a US-based VICE reporter he’d never heard a coke buyer express any concerns about where their party powder came from.

‘On the consumer side right now, nobody gives a shit,’ he said. ‘They can be vegan and still blow lines. Human bloodshed is fine for you, but animal bloodshed? No. It’s kinda ugly in that sense for sure.’

Cartels and death: What you need to know

164,000 people were murdered in Mexico between 2007 and 2014

27,000 were killed in 2011 alone

There were more civilian deaths in Mexico than in Afghanistan and Iraq combined during this period

Reports have linked 34 per cent of these murders to cartels – other estimates put this figure higher, at 55 per cent

Around 25 to 30 tonnes of cocaine is trafficked into the UK every year

But this isn’t for lack of trying on the part of the authorities. A decade ago, in 2006, the UK government teamed up with Colombia to launch a ‘shared responsibility’ campaign to guilt trip middle and upper class users into laying off coke.

‘Wake up Europe!’ warned Antonio Maria Costa, the then-head of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), at the programme’s launch.

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‘You are heading for a crisis. Cocaine users are not only harming only harming themselves and, potentially, others.

‘They are contributing to the destruction of the environment, and are bankrolling drug traffickers, insurgents and terrorists. Keep that in mind next time you think a line of coke is trendy and harmless.’

Although these strong words (and many others like them) barely made a dent in our cocaine consumption, the National Crime Agency re-launched the anti-coke campaign at the end of last year as #EveryLineCounts.

‘When [people] use cocaine, aside from putting their own lives at risk, they are feeding an industry which routinely uses death, violence and destruction in its production process,’ Tony Saggers, head of the NCA’s Drugs Threat division, said.

‘Buying cocaine funds the exploitation of impoverished people, destroys and pollutes large areas of rainforest, forces people from their homes so coca can be grown on their land, and results in the murder of police officers and others who stand in the way of powerful crime groups.’

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So even with all of this in mind, why does cocaine still have such a strong hold on us?

Probably, sadly, for the same reasons that people still buy fast fashion they know has been made in sweatshops, and fast food made from tortured, battery-farmed animals.